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FCC reaches out to Twitterati

Ofcom efforts show the difficult road ahead

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The Federal Communications Commission has launched both a blog and a Twitter feed. Amazingly, the latter has already attracted 952 followers, despite having only two tweets so far.

But there are already three blog entries, the first of which explains that the blog won't be commenting on everything the FCC does: like most regulators these days the FCC has an unfeasibly wide remit. "Blogband", as the blog desires to be known, will be focused on the National Broadband Plan which is scheduled for completion within six months.

We're not sure how broad the information coming out of the FCC Twitter feed will be. The FCC claims "tweets will include news about the FCC and progress reports on the National Broadband Plan", though how long the regulator manages to keep that up remains to be seen.

Here in Blighty our regulator, Ofcom, has been using Twitter for months. The posts that started out chatty and engaging, but over the last few months they have degenerated into links to press releases.

There's no single Ofcom blog, but two of the three that do exist, Superfast Broadband and Public Service Broadcasting, get some traffic. On the other hand, Mobile was last updated in November, with the plaintive cry that "this blog is still alive and raring to go. If you have any suggestions for how we can improve the blog, or any topics you would like us to discuss, then please leave a comment".

Engaging with the public is all very well, as long as one has the resources to do so. Blogs and Twitter feeds are very easy to launch, and rather harder to maintain. By piling in three posts in its first day of operation, Blogland is setting a standard it may struggle to sustain. ®